Even if I worded a description of LW quite carefully, I’d eventually get to something which would be intractable to some everyday dude off the street. My guess is that those intractable topics would include cryonics, MWI QM and existential risk posed by AI.
When they walk away from that conversation, the intractable parts are what they’ll remember, and how they’ll characterise it. I don’t have to lie or misrepresent in any way, shape or form. I just have to be not careful enough.
Agreed, I tried to explain Less Wrong to my father and now he thinks we’re some doomsday cult concerned that AI’s will wipe out humanity and rearrange our atoms in smiley faces. He concluded that everyone here has “way to much imagination” and now he won’t listen to anything that comes from this blog.
I tend to explain it as “a blog about rationality started by transhumanists. Has weird and stupid bits, but is mostly good really. The comment moderation system actually works. Addictive.” That is: upfront about the weirdness, then in with the good stuff. I suppose it helps that these are people who can expand the word “transhumanists”.
Even if I worded a description of LW quite carefully, I’d eventually get to something which would be intractable to some everyday dude off the street. My guess is that those intractable topics would include cryonics, MWI QM and existential risk posed by AI.
When they walk away from that conversation, the intractable parts are what they’ll remember, and how they’ll characterise it. I don’t have to lie or misrepresent in any way, shape or form. I just have to be not careful enough.
Agreed, I tried to explain Less Wrong to my father and now he thinks we’re some doomsday cult concerned that AI’s will wipe out humanity and rearrange our atoms in smiley faces. He concluded that everyone here has “way to much imagination” and now he won’t listen to anything that comes from this blog.
I tend to explain it as “a blog about rationality started by transhumanists. Has weird and stupid bits, but is mostly good really. The comment moderation system actually works. Addictive.” That is: upfront about the weirdness, then in with the good stuff. I suppose it helps that these are people who can expand the word “transhumanists”.